Murder, Mystery, and Magic. John Burke
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talking about you. Gemma thinks we ought to have a little celebration. Tell you what, come round right now. Just for drinks.”
The invitation sounded stiff and oddly uninviting. Maybe Gemma’s suggestion hadn’t appealed to him at such short notice. I tried to argue, but at once he got into forceful mood and sounded downright angry at any idea of my not doing as I was told. He might not really have wanted to offer one of the lower ranks a drink, but now that the offer had been made he expected it to be regarded as an order.
I rang for a taxi. If we were going to knock back toasts to the revivified career of Crispin Brooke, I wasn’t going to risk taking my own car and driving back awash with celebratory booze.
* * * *
When I arrived, my discretion proved justified. Crispin immediately poured a large Scotch and stared at me as if to see whether I was man enough to knock it back. I had seen him in many moods--swaggering he-man, charismatic author at a signing session, and resentful, neglected author—but never in quite this tautly aggressive mood. If this was going to be a celebration, its atmosphere was no jollier than some of our dismal sessions discussing his falling sales.
Gemma swept in and kissed me more effusively than she had ever done before in her husband’s presence or, for that matter, when we were alone together. “Darling David,” she gushed. “The miracle worker!”
She sat down, crossed her exquisite legs, and went on looking roguishly at me—yes, roguishly—while Crispin without a word poured her a vodka and tonic.
There was a silence.
Gemma broke it. “Crispin, do tell David about your idea for your next book.”
My heart sank. It would surely sound drearily the same as the theme of the last two. But for a moment he seemed to relax, and threw out a few vague ideas. Doubts and gloom had been banished. His present novel had been accepted and would come out later in the year, so what was there to worry about?
Yet he remained prickly and resentful about something.
I wondered how much more money Gemma was prepared to invest in their life together.
“A pity,” she said out of the blue, “that you’ve never tackled a straightforward murder mystery. There’s a market for them, isn’t there, David?”
“If you’ve got the knack, yes.”
“Not my scene,” said Crispin dourly. “Too much contrivance.”
Gemma wasn’t looking at either of us but contemplating something far away. “Isn’t that the point? Working out a problem just for the fun of it. Dreaming up twists and turns, and then surprising everybody with a clear-cut logical ending. Aren’t you even tempted?”
“Maybe you ought to try one yourself,” I suggested.
Now at last she glanced at me, with that same sudden gleam as when I had joked about Crispin killing her. “Maybe.” It was an echo of that whisper: Kill me…kill….
And Crispin was glaring. Alert to any threat of competition as a writer? Or as something else?
Standing awkwardly in the middle of his own Persian rug, he emitted a bluff, would-be no-nonsense laugh. As if to show who was in charge here, he leaned down to kiss Gemma just as extravagantly as she had kissed me. Only I was sure his mouth didn’t open. He kept his lips hard, compressed, assaulting. I saw her shiver.
“This last week”—he raised his mouth and spoke to me over her head—“I’ve hardly seen Gemma.”
“Been out buying bottles of bubbly?” I suggested feebly.
Gemma got up and, although the room was not particularly warm, opened a window which, I vaguely recalled, faced out across a passage between this house and the one next door, Then, not leaving the honours to her husband, she reached for the whisky bottle and insisted on refilling my glass. She took her time, leaning over me so that her left breast rested against my cheek.
Crispin glared at me. “You’re not really interested in my next book, are you?”
“Well, old lad, until you’ve come up with a few pages—”
“It’s not me you’ve been interested in for a long time, is it? Not me or my work. It’s my wife you’re after.”
“Crispin, what the hell’s got into you?”
“It’s you. That’s what. You getting into my wife. Every bloody day of the week. D’you think I’m blind and deaf and bloody stupid?”
I’d only been with her a couple of hours that one day in that one week, If she’d been away from home more than that, it wasn’t with me. But protesting that it had certainly not been every day of the week would hardly have been a sensible defence. While I shook my head, playing for time, Gemma sat down again and looked coolly from one to the other of us as if to guess who might risk the first blow and who would qualify to carry off the prize.
I took it slow and dignified. “I do think you’d find it more fruitful to keep your lively imagination for your writing, Crispin.”
“And don’t patronize me, Milburn.” My Christian name had been ditched and his voice was rising to a parade-ground bellow. “You’ve done damn-all to promote my books until even you could hardly fail to sell this last one. And all the time you’ve been having it off with my wife. Sniggering behind my back.”
“Where’d you get all these crazy notions?”
“From the way she looks, and the things she’s told me.”
“Told you?”
Still Gemma wasn’t saying a word. Might almost not have been in the room with us. Yet she was the most important person in that room, round which everything was revolving. Had they already had a big scene before I arrived? Was she planning to leave him? To come to me?
I put my glass down. “I’m not going to listen to any more of this.”
“You’ll listen to just as much as I choose to say to you.”
Now I was the one who was shouting. “And who d’you think you are, insulting me without the—”
“How could anyone insult anyone as two-timing as you?”
I got up. “I’ve had enough of this.”
“You’re not leaving here until we’ve—”
“I shall leave here when it suits me. And it suits me right now. So just get out of my way, or else—”
“Or else what?”
He stood there, swaying from side to side. And we went on swapping ridiculous insults and accusations, standing in the middle of the room and making a racket like football hooligans. Enough, you’d have thought, to get the neighbours phoning or coming round and ringing the doorbell to complain.
I risked a glance at Gemma, hoping for a hint of some kind, wondering how much she had really told him, or if that had just been a wild stab of his.
Her smile was distant, almost contemptuous—contemptuous, I thought, of both of us. Sitting there so silently, just letting it happen.
I said: “I’m going to ring for a taxi.”
“Not from my phone, you’re not. You can start walking. But only when I’ve finished with you.”
His threatening sway from side to side became erratic. He lurched forward, put out a hand, but could find nothing to grasp except my arm. I tried to steer him towards an armchair. He recovered for a few seconds, long enough to bellow a string of obscenities at me before collapsing into the chair.
In an undertone, hoping not to start him off ranting again, I muttered to Gemma: “Look, how much did he have to drink before I got here?”
She seemed to wake up at last, and motioned me to follow her out into the hall.
“I